Saturday, June 11, 2011

News items and comments

Tim Blair – Saturday, June 11, 11 (07:16 am)

One year ago this month, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, his eyes brimming with tears and his poll numbers in the dirt, stood on the steps of Parliament and announced his resignation. No Australian prime minister had ever been ousted by his party during his first term in office — an Icarus-like fall from grace for a man who had, just months earlier, held the highest-ever approval rating for a sitting Australian head of government.

The NYT piece doesn’t mention in any great detail the role of Rudd’s Copenhagen carbonhoping in his downfall. In fact, the paper suggests that Rudd now thrives because of his environmental far-sightedness:

Rudd, who is now foreign minister, is consistently polling as the most popular political leader in the country. His signature legislation — an emissions trading program to tackle climate change — is at the top of the government’s agenda, and his smiling visage and distinctive mop of gray hair are ubiquitous in the news media.

His “signature legislation” (or its latest model) is taking Labor down. No wonder Rudd is smiling.

During a wide-ranging interview last week in his offices in Parliament, Mr. Rudd dodged and parriedattempts to draw him out on whether he intended to pursue the leadership role again. While he insisted that he was not actively seeking a return to the premiership, he repeatedly refused to rule out the possibility in the future.

An anonymous Rudd mate – aren’t they all? – supports the ex-PM:

“It would kill you and I and my dogs, what he went through, but Kevin’s not normal,” said a Labor insider and close friend of Mr. Rudd’s who requested anonymity in order to speak openly.

An intriguing Kevin office fact:

Above his desk hangs a monograph of four Chinese characters drawn in calligraphy. Their Australian translation: “Don’t mess with me,” Mr. Rudd said with a laugh, though he used a saltier epithet than “mess.”

Didn’t stop Julia, whose speaking style is described by the NYT as “wooden”. Readers are invited to pick the exact form of timber that most conforms with the Prime Minister’s, er, timbre. Final cringe-making word from Rudd:

“I’m still on the stage of politics, I’m not in some Brechtian sense self observing. To sustain the analogy, we are the dramatis personae. We are in it, we are not the audience.”

Tim Blair – Saturday, June 11, 11 (06:34 am)

Richard Glover, now aware that his little Sydney column is on the internet, says sorry:

The thing about tattoos was not meant to be taken as a serious suggestion. For those who took it as such, my apologies.

Australian leftists often pose as international sophisticates, yet behave provincially. Glover evidently had no idea that his column – published online – would somehow reach the US, where a great many survivors of WWII concentration camps and their descendents might find his tattoo joke offensive. Imagine the response from Glover and his kind if, say, Sarah Palin ever attempted a similar gag …

Tim Blair – Saturday, June 11, 11 (06:07 am)

While endorsing the Prime Minister’s proposed carbon tax, Mr Beattie has also described himself as despondent and frustrated about Labor’s political position, but noted that it has two years until the next election to improve its political sales effort.

Two years ago, Labor in NSW held out similar hopes for 2011. Miners continue to be a carbon conundrum:

One of Australia’s largest unions has threatened a blue-collar revolt should the nation’s dirtiest coalmines fail to receive the same level of assistance as they were promised under the original emissions trading scheme.

With industry compensation still being thrashed out behind closed doors, the national secretary of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, Tony Maher, said he is worried coalminers will be dudded to appease the Greens.

Maher’s views on the Greens are worth extracting:

• “They want to single out mine workers as some sort of trophy hunt.”

• “The Greens are in la-la land.”

• “The government’s been really silent about coal. The Greens have been silent; they have been poisoned by prejudice.”

Tim Blair – Friday, June 10, 11 (01:29 pm)

It can hardly be denied that violence has a peculiarly vicarious allure in the modern mass media environment, regardless of whether we are talking ratings, book sales, ticket sales, clicks, or good old-fashioned circulation.

Tim Blair – Friday, June 10, 11 (01:13 pm)

Tim Blair – Friday, June 10, 11 (12:26 pm)

Greg Combet gets things half right during an interview with the ABC’s 7.30:

LEIGH SALES:But I just wonder, minister, if people - I just wonder if people are sitting around their dinner tables tonight going, “Oh, sweetheart, oh my goodness, we’re falling behind Germany. Guess we’d better get behind this carbon price.”

Had economic theorists [in the 1960s] rested content with using the microeconomics of the Neoclassical Synthesis strictly as a conceptual device employed in abstract reasoning, it might have done little damage. However, as I have already suggested, this type of theory cried out for application—which, in practice, was nearly always misapplication. The idealized conditions required for theoretical general-equilibrium efficiency could not possibly obtain in the real world; yet the economists readily endorsed government measures aimed at coercively pounding the real world into conformity with these impossible theoretical conditions.

Closely examined, such efforts represented a form of madness. As the great economist James Buchanan has observed, the economists’ obsession with general equilibrium gives rise to “the most sophisticated fallacy in [neoclassical] economic theory, the notion that because certain relationships hold in equilibrium the forced interferences designed to implement these relationships will, in fact, be desirable.”

Speaking of “Buchananian” political economy, one of Jim’s premier students from Jim’s time at the University of Virginia, Dick Wagner (one of my colleagues at GMU Econ), explores in this paper the complexity of political fiscal-decision-making in democratic societies.

Jonah Goldberg takes on the dangerous and fact-challenged notions that motivate Thomas Friedman’s recent – and indescribably awful – New York Times column entitled “The Earth is Full.” If time allows, I plan my own response to Friedman’s historically uninformed and economically idiotic fear-mongering. Where O where is today’s Julian Simon?!

You report that [any-decent-person-in-his-shoes-would-be-disgraced U.S. Rep. Anthony] “Weiner has also complained to friends that he wasn’t sure how he would make a living if he were to leave Congress and its $174,000 annual salary. ‘He’s worried about money and how to pay his bills,’ said a Democratic insider. ‘He’s very concerned about that’” (“Weiner shows no signs of quitting,” June 9).

Overlook the fact that, by admitting this reason for clinging to political office, any professions that Mr. Weiner has made in the past or will make in the future about his ‘devotion to public service,’ his ‘love of country,’ or his ‘loyalty to the Democratic party’ should be seen as the self-serving lies that they are.

Instead, ask this simple question: why should Americans trust Mr. Weiner with substantial power to decide how to annually spend $3.8 trillion dollars of other people’s money if he, a 46-year-old college graduate who’s earned a six-figure salary for each of at least the past 12 years, has neither saved enough to pay his bills should he be unemployed for a while nor developed any skills that would allow him to earn a decent living in the private sector?

While no tests of vegetable sprouts from the farm in Lower Saxony came back positive for the E. coli strain responsible for the outbreak, an investigation into the pattern of the outbreak yielded enough evidence to put the finger of blame on the farm, Reinhard Burger, president of the Robert Koch Institute, said...

Andrew Bolt – Saturday, June 11, 11 (09:25 am)

WHEN I saw the story A Bloody Business on ABC1’s Four Corners, I felt the same way as most viewers: shocked at the cruelty of the handlers and the general treatment of the cattle displayed. It was clearly unacceptable and violated any standards of decent treatment of animals.

As a trained veterinarian I have had extensive experience involving many aspects of the treatment of animals in Indonesia.

I have seen many abattoirs first-hand and believe that, as shocking and appalling as the footage in the Four Corners expose was, it is in no way representative of the conditions in most abattoirs in Indonesia.

Thus, as commendable as efforts by reporter Sarah Ferguson and Animals Australia’s Lyn White have been in bringing to light this mistreatment of some of the cattle exported to Indonesia, the implication that all Indonesian abattoirs are the same is incorrect, and the blanket ban that has come in the wake of this program is thus uncalled for.

THE chief executive of Australia’s largest cattle producer says an urgent resumption of live exports to Indonesia is needed to prevent the ‘’implosion’’ of remote communities in the Northern Territory reliant on cattle farming.

David Farley, the head of Australia Agricultural Company (AAco), said the ban had potentially ‘’psychologically devastating’’ effects on isolated communities who relied on the cattle trade as their predominant source of income, but were now left ‘’trying to work out what to do next’’…

‘’There are family operations, there are indigenous operations, there are townships and communities that are totally reliant on this business.

‘’We’re talking about people in communities in remote isolated areas … who have one cash flow once a year.’’

Andrew Bolt – Saturday, June 11, 11 (08:52 am)

The (Productivity Commission) report contradicts the previous week’s final Garnaut review, which argued Australia was left behind by much of the world on climate change action. The Productivity Commission found that measured by emission-reduction resources as a portion of GDP Germany is in front, followed by Britain, with Australia, China and the US in the “mid-range”. When measured as an average implicit abatement subsidy Australia was estimated at $44 a tonne of carbon dioxide, with America at $43 and China $35 respectively…

Indeed, the PC goes further and brands as invalid the 2010 analysis by the firm, Vivid Economics, as commissioned by the Climate Institute and used by minister Greg Combet earlier this year when he argued the effective price in parts of China was $14 a tonne compared with $1.68 a tonne in Australia. The commission says “no” to such analysis and it can be expected to be quietly forgotten by Labor.

Some “experts” seem to trying to fool us.

And that’s not even allowing for the fact that governments are selling us schemes that they should know are actually useless:

(The Productivity Commission report) estimates that for Australia in 2010 the combined impact of the Renewable Energy Target and solar PV subsidies equated to $149 million-$194m, with windfall gains going to homes that took up the option. The implicit abatement subsidy in relation to solar PV was in the astounding range of $431 to $1043 a tonne of carbon dioxide…

The PC proceeds to the incredible conclusion that because state and territory feed-in tariffs overlapped completely with the RET in 2010, “they did not lead to any additional abatement” and “could have actually led to higher emissions than if there had been no feed-in-tariff schemes”.

The whole debate - from the science to the politics to the policy - is riddled with falsehoods, false assumptions, dodgy statistics, exaggeration and utterly useless gestures.

“In a sense, like a lot of fanatical Labor people, I am sort of despondent that they are not explaining and selling it (the carbon dioxide tax) better,” said Mr Beattie.

“Frankly, they’ve really got to do better at the job than they have been. I find it frustrating that they are on the right path and they’ve got time on their side but they just haven’t got the rhetoric right and they haven’t got the detail right.”

‘’Army units have started their mission to control Jisr al-Shughur and neighbouring villages and arrest the armed gangs,’’ state television said, adding that the raid had been launched ‘’at the request of residents’’.

One witness said that ‘’military forces bombarded the villages around Jisr al-Shughur in their advance upon the town’’…

Rights activists said almost all of the 50,000 inhabitants of Jisr al-Shughur had fled - some to neighbouring Turkey - since tanks and troops began earlier this week to converge on the north-western town.

Some residents said Syrian police had turned their guns on one another and that soldiers shed their uniforms rather than obey orders to fire on protesters.

A 21-year-old Syrian policeman, who identified himself as Ahmed Gavi, told a Turkish newspaper that he saw five officers killed on the spot when they refused orders to shoot unarmed protesters. He said he escaped across the border with 60 other officers.

Gavi said so many officers died because a firefight broke out among the more than 200 policemen ordered to carry out an operation against the protesters. His account could not be independently verified, but other refugees have given similar descriptions.

The costs of the Renewable Energy Target - which provides generous subsidies for rooftop solar schemes and large-scale projects such as wind farms - will explode by 360 per cent over the three years to June 30, 2013, as power companies try to meet the target of sourcing 20 per cent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020…

The report by the Australian Energy Market Commission was released after a meeting of energy and resources ministers in Perth, who vowed to hold special meetings to “consider energy security implications arising from the introduction of a carbon price”.

The document will add further weight to this week’s warnings by the Productivity Commission that the renewable energy incentives being demanded by the Greens are pushing up costs for little environmental gain.

While the commission and big businesses are urging that subsidies for renewable energy be scrapped with the introduction of a carbon price, Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson yesterday stared down the demand. He said the government’s approach to clean energy in Australia was through setting a price on carbon and the renewable energy target.

And by how much will all these billions cut the world’s temperature?

UPDATE

But try telling the warmists who will impose the carbon dioxide tax to let go of their pet subsidies:

Andrew Bolt – Saturday, June 11, 11 (07:59 am)

THE second major riot on Christmas Island in less than three months has sparked another promise of a detention centre review. A guard suffered a leg injury when poles and concrete were used as weapons to attack authorities during a violent uprising that began on Thursday night.

Andrew Bolt – Saturday, June 11, 11 (07:55 am)

WHERE’S Kevin? Where’s the Foreign Minister when his leader has two foreign crises on her hands?

Normally the punishment for desertion in battle is death, politically speaking.

But Kevin Rudd is so untouchable in this shambolic government that he can desert his post without Prime Minister Julia Gillard daring to whisper even a word of criticism.

Watch him now, skylarking on his own off in Hungary, Finland, Stockholm Sweden, Abu Dhabi, New York and London—anywhere but where he’s needed right now.

You see, Gillard is drowning in two foreign policy disasters entirely of her own making.

One is her overreaction to the barbaric slaughter of Australian cattle in Indonesia. Rather than simply ban the cruellest abattoirs, Gillard has frozen all live exports of our cattle to Indonesia, where our beef supplies a third of the entire market.

Indonesia is naturally offended. It has hinted at retaliation. It has talked of needing to become independent of our beef imports, which would kill a trade worth more than $300 million a year to us.

Clearly Indonesia needed to be consulted, placated, talked around. And who better to do that than our Foreign Minister?

Meanwhile, Gillard has also made a pig’s breakfast of her boat people policy.

First, she drafted the softening in 2008 of our border laws, thus luring nearly 7000 boat people into our detention centres and some 200 more to their deaths at sea.

Her “fixes” since have been ludicrous. Last year she promised to build a detention centre in East Timor, which was news to the offended East Timorese.

Last month she announced a deal with Malaysia - 800 of our boat people for 4000 of their refugees - before it had even been signed. Indeed, it’s still not signed.

She also vowed to send every new boat person from that date overseas, clearly banking on Papua New Guinea agreeing to reopen a detention centre on Manus Island.

But the PNG Government is now in disarray, with its Prime Minister off sick and its Foreign Minister sacked. Forget Manus Island for now.

So looking like fools, the Government desperately needs someone to sweet-talk PNG into action and Malaysia into signing. Again. who better to do that than our Foreign Minister?

Calling Kevin Rudd. Kevin? Where are you, mate? Hello?

Actually, with Rudd needed most in Papua New Guinea, Malaysia and Indonesia, let’s check where he’s been this past month.

A month ago today, he was in Bangkok, for a stopover on his way to Helsinki and Stockholm. Then he was in Oslo, before flying back via Guangzhou, where he gave a speech.

Two weeks later he was off again, this time to Hungary, Abu Dhabi, Washington and London.

You may think he had pressing business in our national interest in those places. And you’d be wrong.

CARS buried at Falls Creek and Mt Buller, others abandoned on the Kosciuszko Rd and Alpine Way, massive snow drifts up high at Perisher and Thredbo, blizzard conditions, snowfall accumulations in excess of 40cm. As the big dump continues Friday, skiers are looking up at the scoreboard - with a 2m season well within our sights....Clearly, July 2008 has delivered the best consistent skiing conditions since the great 2004 season - and there is potential for a cold and snowy peak month of August.

The Australian Federal Police said they were forced to use “chemical munitions” and bean bag bullets to quell the overnight protest involving about 100 detainees, some of whom armed themselves with metal poles and broken concrete.

Are these the detainees Malaysia will be taking off our hands? Or is Malaysia looking on and saying, well, on second thoughts....

Every responsible action made by another world leader makes Gillard look bad

INDONESIAN President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono today ordered an investigation of abattoirs as he sought to ensure meat supplies after Australia suspended live cattle exports due to animal cruelty conce...

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Government doesn't know how to spend $50 billion deficit .. But they won't give it back to taxpayers

They know how to take our money.

FORMER planning minister Tony Kelly has gifted his ALP colleague Steve Whan hundreds of thousands of dollars by giving up his seat a fortnight before Mr Whan's generous pension entitlement was to run ...

He has it too easy. He needs to be busier

HE is one of Australia's most notorious prisoners but being in a maximum security jail cell did not stop Bassam Hamzy masterminding a shooting and two kidnappings on a smuggled mobile phone, it has be...

MICHAEL Clarke will find there are times when it is lonely at the top. It is why Australia's 43rd Test captain has spent the past fortnight on a self-imposed boot camp, pushing himself to run up deser...

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I want her to be President.

Sarah Palin is the reason why candidate Sarah Palin’s numbers are low. The American people have seen her, they’ve heard her, and they’ve formed their opinions about her. Let’s just say they’re not impressed.

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I asked my wife what she used hers for. She said it was ancient history

It's been called a war weapon, a candlestick, a child's toy, a weather gauge, an astronomical instrument, and a religious symbol -- just to name a few. But what IS this mystery object? Can you do what the world's archaeologists can't? Can you explain this -- thing?

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The problem isn't NATO. The problem is Obama fails to present a coherent policy on anything.

Sorry 'Ranga

FAST food pizza chain Dominos is forced to apologise to schoolboy after calling him the "Ginger Kid".

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Mr Rohan is not my state member. My state member is Guy Zangari. However Mr Rohan is the only member of government to have taken the time to hear my issue which dates back to when Bob Carr first became Premier. I applaud the good work Mr Rohan is doing and I support him. Thanks to Mr Rohan, and people like him, NSW can rest assured that corruption in the state is ending. The result will be prosperity. Those Smithfield public servants should go back to work.

FRONTLINE public servants confronted Smithfield State Liberal MP Andrew Rohan at his office last week urging him to vote against a bill that would give the State Government unprecedented powers to slash wages and conditions.

Transparency and rule of law don't seem to matter too much to Obama.

The Medicare trust fund situation also shows how politically the Obama White House views virtually every major public policy issue. Mr. Obama apparently wants to keep Medicare as an issue to beat up Republicans in the 2012 campaign, protect congressional Democrats from tough votes in the months befo

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Not really a change. Obama still won't address questions of his past.

Forget Anthony Weiner and the coverage of his Twitter sex scandal. The big news is the coming battle. Prepare now ready for an all-out war among media on the left and the right as the 2012 presidential campaign heats up.

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one can learn from spiders .. but I am not the one.

Like eight-legged scuba divers, some spiders can breathe underwater using an air bubble as an oxygen tank of sorts. Now, scientists have figured out some of the fascinating details of this arachnid diving bell, including that it can give the spiders more than a day's worth of air.

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Obama has no reason to be in the gun selling business. It won't make up for his deficit from spending.

Officials at the Department of Justice are in 'panic mode', according to multiple sources, as word spreads that testimony next week will paint a bleak and humiliating picture of 'Operation Fast and Furious', the botched undercover operation that left a trail of blood from Mexico to Washington DC. Th

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Maybe if Obama shared his plan with congress they would back it. That assumes he has one.

The Obama administration is struggling to keep Congress on board as it appeals for patience in Libya, with lawmakers in both chambers moving to check the president's war powers as the cost of the operation rises.

ch?v=1craYSkjNcU Few people know about CJ Dennis. They don't teach about him in Australian Schools anymore. Their sacrifice should not be unnoticed. There should be anger when it is clear that ALP policy is killing our troops.

Risk Rarius Please distribute guys. I spent the last two days figuring how to do this video on my iPad, and at the end of the day, they must be remembered by all Australians which is what I want, and what they deserve

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About Me

I have an m-audio mobile pre amp fed by the audiotechnica 2041sp condensor mic pack. Prior to 15/4/06, I'd used a Shure sm-58 that required a nuclear blast to register a sound or the internal mic of my aged imac, which has a penchance to recording my breathing. I also used a Griffin itrip, until the community convinced me it was not hiding my talent as well as the other mics.

I am a Writer and an occasional Math Teacher (Sir, what's the occasion?). I like to sing, having no instrumental talent (cannot even clap in time, and yes, I'm aware singing badly IS obnoxious).

I have performed the finale to Les Miserables before an audience of 500. I have also sung before a similar audience (students, parents) renditions of 'I Will' (Beatles), 'Mr Cairo' (Jon Vangelis) and 'I am Australian' (Seekers). Now I seek another profession because the audience hates me ..